


A Story of Trust

by BuddyTheMeanPeacock



Series: Storyteller [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a sad ending, Gen, POV Third Person, amalgamation of headcanons in a DimiLaude server I lurk in lol, let's be a lil sad bois
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-08 02:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21228629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuddyTheMeanPeacock/pseuds/BuddyTheMeanPeacock
Summary: A story of trust, and the feelings attached to it





	A Story of Trust

It has been years since Claude has last seen Dimitri. They stood in Claude's room in Almyra, at Dimitri's request of privacy. 

Claude allowed it. It would be hard to see Dimitri's face splattered in guilt in the company of others, after all. 

Claud very rarely relished in other's agony. But he has been waiting for this, the one reaction he has been absolutely _drooling_ over. 

Right now there was anger. Nothing like it was in the past, this was an anger born from a far simpler sense of betrayal. How _hysterical! _Claude fell back on years of practice to hold in laughter.

"Claude, how could you?" Dimitri pleaded. "It has been nearly _ten years. _You leave without a word, and now suddenly you ask for my presence in an audience? Do you realize how worried all of us were?"

A chuckle escaped him. Hm. Seems those years of practice weren't as good in use against Dimitri. He slapped on his biggest easygoing smile. "Aww, are you saying you missed me Your Kingliness? I'm flattered, honestly." 

_"Claude, enough!"_ Dimitri yells, now genuinely angered at Claude's nonchalant tone. "I answered your letter under the pretense that you would answer to me why you abandoned us, and I will not tolerate any of your jokes. You _will_ tell me, right now."

"Ooohh, so scary!" Claude couldn't help but tease. "But I don't think killing a king would help with negotiations quite-"

He stopped as Dimitri took a deliberate step foward. Claude felt his chest run cold.

"Alright, alright!" He says. He was a king now. Dimitri couldn't hurt him without putting Fodlan at risk of another war. He was safe. He kept smiling. "I may keep a secret or two but I would _never_ lie." Before Dimitri could say anything Claude continued. "Take a seat. I'm going to tell you a story."

Dimitri rose an eyebrow, still angry but now curious. "This had better not be one of your tricks," he warns before sitting down on one of the chairs.

"_Never,_" Claude purrs. "Now, let me start..."

_\---_

_Once upon a time, in a land of deserts and prairies and mountains, there was a boy, with skin like smooth bark and eyes like fresh treetops._

_This boy had a secret, one his mother and father told him to tell no one. "It would dangerous for you if anyone knew," they said. "Keep it to yourself."_

_The boy didn't understand. It surely wasn't that bad, right? He couldn't see the danger, his eyes too innocent and bright, newly grown leaves on the young tree sapling._

_One day, the boy had snuck out of his home, to the big markets outside. There he met another boy, his skin a darker bark and his eyes like the sunset. They grew close, and treetopped eyes saw for the first time what having a friend was like._

_But then, he had a thought._

_Friends don't keep secrets from each other, right?_

_So, one day, as like any other as any other was, he told his friend his secret._

_"My mother and father are the queen and king!" he whispered in his friend's ear. "Isn't that cool?"_

_His friend had said nothing. The boy looked at his friend's face, and his warm sunset eyes felt strangely hot when they met his._

_"...What?" his friend finally said. "You're **him**?"_

_The boy nodded._

_His friend left, no other word said. The boy was confused. Had his friend remembered something? Had he said something wrong? He returned to his home, thinking it was strange._

_But the next day he met his friend and everything seemed normal. Or, better, perhaps. His friend seemed less comfortable in the boy's presence now, but still would come to meet him. The boy was sad. Did his friend think he had to act different because of the boy's parents?_

_They met again, weeks after he had shared his secret. The boy was determined to make his friend see that they were still friends, he didn't have to act weird around him. He went to his friend-_

_and felt pain._

_He looked down. A dagger in his chest. He looked up. His friend's eyes, a blazing inferno, twisted and morphed by hatred._

_ **"Die, monster! I won't let you take Almyra!"** _

_The boy had felt feeling leave the tips of his fingers and toes. He tried to breathe but his throat was closing and opening of its own will. His eyes tried to focus but everything had spun, everything was blurry, he could only see two small caves filled with fire. He reached for his chest but his arms were numb. He moved to run but his legs instead buckled. Everything was darkening, all feeling was leaving._

_Except for the beating of his heart. He swore, swears to this day, he could feel it beat against the cold, unfeeling steel._

_Of course, the boy was saved. Miraculously found by his instructor who happened to be near, he was told it was that and his mother's blood that allowed him to be saved. It didn't make sense, but then what about what happened did?_

_As the boy laid in his bed, his mother and father had come to him. They knelt by him. Much of what they said was lost to the boy, but he hadn't forgotten everything._

_"You can't expect to stay alive if you make no effort to keep yourself safe," his father said, eyes golden like the silks he wore. "We can't save you from everything. You must learn to look after yourself."_

_"Son, there is something you must learn."_

_The forest looked at her little sapling and spoke words he would never forget._

_"Giving out trust is like taking in poison. You do it only if you absolutely must, and only in small doses. You must only indulge in the toxin of liquor, just as you only trust those you know can be trusted."_

_They offered no true words of comfort, but the boy knew they cared. The words they had spoken would stick with him, as the attacks against him grew ever more frequent in occurrence._

_One day, the boy becoming a young man, he found out about a place named Fodlan, the land of his mother. He found out his station in such a land, and left for it, leaving his father's tongue for his mother's home._

_A new start, he was hoping for. No poisons, no daggers, no eyes transformed by anger. A dream planted itself inside the damaged young tree, of unity and peace._

_It was almost stabbed once his feet landed on the soil._

_It was the same. He could see it in how they looked at him. They were disgusted, just as they were, just as **he** was. Waiting for him to drop his guard, waiting for the chance to kill him, but he won't let them, **he won't fall for it again-**_

_..._

_The young man eventually adjusted. He honed his easygoing smile and nonchalance to a fine point among those around him here, more willing to let him in in their ignorance as he soaked in their land's history._

_He keeps his secret close to his scarred chest._

_The young man one day was told to go to a grand school. The Officer's Academy, inside the magnificent Garreg Mach monastery. _

_It was there the young man met a fellow student. Eyes like the ocean and hair like wheat. He was a prince, the young man had found. His chest had felt cold for a beat._

_Prim and proper, and as softhearted as they had came, the young man had found the prince oddly easy to talk to. The prince was easily flustered, but always returned the young man's quips with one of his own. He had found himself seeking the prince out often, and the prince had never refused his company. Eventually, the prince was the one to seek out the young man, much to his surprise._

_He tried to keep his guard up, but found he couldn't. One night, his racing thoughts became too much, his body twitching at every noise, and this was the night. He could feel it, why else would he be feeling like this? If he closed his eyes they would come, **he** would come, thrust his dagger through my chest and kill me-_

_..._

_He had found himself outside the prince's room, eyes wide and he breathed slowly, so slowly, and deeply, trying to stop the trembles that racked his body. The door opened and the prince stood there, shocked._

_"What are you-"_

_"Lemme crash here tonight."_

_The prince hadn't questioned the young man's odd request, easy words ruined by his body's betrayal, didn't ask him what was the matter. The prince had simply lead the young man to his bed and laid with him, wrapping his arms around him. The loss of freedom in movement should have upset him, the young man thought, but it was instead the safest he'd felt in years._

_"I will not let anything happen to you." the prince told the young man. The young man had taken in those words, drank them in, had gotten drunk off of them. He didn't want this feeling to leave._

_He indulged. He drank, and drank, and drank._

_Until it happened._

_A princess waged war, and the prince's eyes were twisted and morped by hatred. The young man should have stayed away, but he was addicted, begging for one last drop. _

_He was shoved to the side._

_"Nothing matters more to me than having that girl's head!"_

_How easily he was thrown away. The young man stood there, speechless, watching the prince turn from him. Soon the prince was lost in the chaos of the invasion._

_Five years pass. Five years of restless nights filled with would-be assassins, of foods tainted with substances only his mother's blood saved him from, of politics of a land he was just coming to know consuming his life. In the moment all was clear but to remember it was hard; it all slurred together into one incomprehensible mess._

_The tides of war change and the young man- a man proper- saw a chance for victory. He heard of the prince's family flags raising in areas and he felt the urge to drink return. It made him sick, but such was the nature of liquor, right?_

_The battle came and the man saw the prince, one-eyed and battle hungry. The man rushed to the prince._

_ ** "Move, or I will run my spear through your chest! I will not allow you to take her death from me!" ** _

_Time stopped. The man's head exploded in pain but he hadn't moved to ease it. A ringing in his ears drowned all sound as though dragged down in the raging ocean of the prince's eye. He had felt his heart beating, and he swore, swears to this day, that he grew colder and colder with each pulsation. _

_It must have been fate._

_An arrow, tipped with knock out tranquilizer for prisoners, drawn and fired. The prince enraged but quickly slowed and sedated. The battle finished and the prince carried back to base. The man in his room stared at walls, silent._

_He'd been drinking poison._

_He won't make that mistake again._

_He helped in the prince's recovery, of course. He was needed to win the war. It took time but the anger eventually left the prince, leaving only guilt and remorse. The prince begged for the man's forgiveness, and the man took the prince's apology with an easy going smile._

_He threw the poison away. Such words won't get to him again._

_Eventually the war waging princess was killed, their sudden last enemy defeated, and the man returned to his first home, discarding his second, telling no one. He worked tirelessly to work on the latter half of his dream, somehow strong despite the tainted tree it grew from. _

_Now, the man was finally king. He could build off his work as prince and as a young man in Fodlan, to make sure a young boy doesn't feel his heart beat against steel_.

\---

The anger on Dimitri's face changed into abject horror. He sat there speechless, shocked, engulfed in a bottomless canyon of guilt. His one eye stared wide as the words he heard sank into him.

Claude laughed.

A good, hearty laugh left his mouth at the sight of King Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd looking so utterly foolish. "You should- you should see your _face!_" Claude breathed out. "You look like some- like a- like a _dead fish! _Please close your mouth, you're gonna kill me!" So stupid, he was just so _stupid_.

"Claude-"

"And _oh_, when you blathered on about how _I _abandoned _you_," he threw a hand on his forehead, "how you all were _oh so worried_ about me-"

"We _were-!"_

"Yes, yes, I'm sure," Claude took a breath, memories flooding back into his already racing mind. "I'm sure you all were so worried about where I was... unless I'd told Lorenz I was prince of Almyra. Unless I told Hilda. Until your little lion cubs or those _loyal _Empire eagles found out. Then I would have been a threat. The Alliance would have gotten rid of the Almyran rat that snuck past their border-

"_Claude-!"_

"-the Kingdom would have made sure their _precious king _couldn't be killed by foreign murderers _again,_" a flash of anguish flashed across Dimitri's face and it felt good, _so good, _a blazing inferno alit in his chest to have this _monster_ feel pain, "the Empire would have roused distrust and chaos to gain the upper hand. I've thought about this, Dimitri. It all ran through my head, night after night after night. I knew what would happen. I _saw_ their faces, I saw what they felt, and if they didn't show it I knew they were hiding it, they would have wanted me dead just like _he _did, **_just like you did_**-" 

_'Just like he **does.**'_

The thought struck him like lightning. No, no, he was safe, wasn't he? Dimitri wouldn't put Fodlan at risk of war so soon, right? But, no, Claude thought he knew him before; what if he _would_? What if his entire "recovery" was a façade- no, Dimitri wouldn't be able to act so cordial for long if it was _all_ fake. But what if he was faking _now_? These emotions, this heartbreak, it was _just_ what Claude had wanted. It's too perfect, enough to make Claude let his guard down. Claude was near the door, his back not facing it but still close enough to run if he needed. A soldier was positioned near the outside of his room, so Dimitri couldn't get anywhere without it being known. It wouldn't matter though, if the rest of Almyra was engrossed in fighting. But- he'd need an army with him, a substantial military force. Not positioned in Fodlan's Locket, he's sure. Then... the navy? Claude felt himself sweating. Fodlan's naval forces were pathetic against Almyra's, but what if Dimitri banked on him thinking that? No one was prepared, it was make the perfect ambush-

"_CLAUDE!" _

He snaps his head towards the shout. Dimitri still sat there gripping the shattered end of an armrest- trying to appear less imposing than he would if he were standing, as if he couldn't snap Claude's neck in an instant. Dimitri lowered his voice at Claude's gaze.

"I... I am so... You've been suffering for so _long_, and none of us- none of us saw it." Dimitri's eye was soaked in tears but he let the admission sit there, the room silent.

He was supposed to beg. Beg for forgiveness, beg for any possibility of Claude giving him another chance, and then Claude would deny him, relish like the child he was never allowed to be in having Dimitri hurt. But instead he was silent, and all at once the inferno in Claude's chest turned to a freezing coldness. Each beat of his heart he felt himself grow colder and colder, never reaching numbness.

He threw his head back and pressed the heels of his hands against his dry eyes, grunting harshly through gritted teeth. He hated him. He hated him, hated him so _much_, months of telling him intoxicating lies of safety and trust only to throw it away _just like **he** did. _And yet he felt no welcoming flames, only his heart beating against steel.

"You ruined me," Claude exhaled. "You... _ruined me, _Dimitri."

He breathed in.

"You..."

He breathed out. He lowered his arms.

"_You_..."

He looked at Dimitri, an easy going smile on his face.

"You think we took too long here? Rumors'll start to spread if we take too much more time by ourselves in my bedroom," he says with a wink.

Dimitri's eye widened at his words. "Claude-" 

"C'mon, Almyran nobles may not be as picky with tardiness as Fodlan ones but it's still rude to keep them waiting."

"Please, _don't do this_-"

"Hmm, you're right. You look like a _mess_. Bad light to show yourself in. Don't worry, I'll make sure to explain your lateness away with my abundance of charm~"

He left the room, leaving Dimitri by himself. The door wasn't bothered behind Claude; Dimitri wasn't following him. Good. He told the soldier to keep an eye on his room and left the area. He really did need to meet with the nobles for negotiations, but he made a quick detour to find one of his scouts first.

He needed a report on any recent naval activity.

**Author's Note:**

> Also known as "What if Dimitri fucked up and broke Claude's tenuous trust and Claude doesn't forgive him"
> 
> Writing a oneshot made from the collective headcanons of those in a ClauMitri discord I'm in to make up for not updating The Lost Deer in a while lol. Recent chapter kind funky to write so ye lmao
> 
> I remember reading somewhere that Claude apparently always talks about his past in exaggerated 3rd person in the japanese and french versions of 3H, not just Marianne's support chain, so wanted to incorporate that in this story 
> 
> Also, this story incorporates the theory that Claude's Crest accelerates his body's healing (because it is LITERALLY unfair that Dimitri's Crest is the only one with a constant passive effect lmao) so ye
> 
> Me @ Claude: Aren't you tired of being chill? Don't you ever wanna get pissed?


End file.
